Rationalizing the Night Away

I feel like my right arm is missing and I’ve almost convinced myself that I need a new camera. I chose this one first, but the 5K+ price tag gave me the giggles since there is no way THAT would ever happen. (But, 16.7 megapixels?? Dude!)

I found this comparison between the new Rebel and the Nikon D70. I think I’m leaning slightly towards the Rebel. Anyone use either one and have feedback on pros and cons?

In order to justify a new camera as a need, which it totally, completely almost is, I’d have to have a photoshoot to go to. Doesn’t anyone need me to come shoot photos of something? Anyone? Bueller?

Link Dump

Tom Coates plays with Odeo. We don’t actually get to hear HIS voice, but we do hear some great questions like what his last meal would be. Nat Torkington asks him about his blogroll (he doesn’t have one). (Odeo)

Amalah talks about losing it around your kid. What do you do when they just keep screaming and there is no way to get them to stop? Walk away, my friend. But just the thoughts that race through your head, like throwing them against the wall, freak you the crap out. Sure is nice to find out that it is NORMAL.

Amanda speaks with Prevention magazine. Not only does she have intuition, but a pretty bad potty mouth. (Rock on!)

Camping with Jes. Ummmm, no. Part I and Part II.

The Harmony Branch™

Schmutzie has invented a way for people to get through the day without yanking their own or the people close to them’s hair out*. It’s called The Harmony Branch™ and it is genius.

I want an order of 20. Mostly, I want to pass them out to the parents that pick up their kids from school. The ones that, you know, have to back into the space and place the direction of the front of the SUV in the optimal trajectory for a speedy and rude exit. Positioning is everything to these parents. They are usually wearing turtlenecks** and having the 4-year-old in the front seat next to them practicing the violin from John Thompson’s Level Five book. Which is piano, but these kids are special and geniuses and can translate from piano to violin on the fly.

I sound so catty which is why I really need an order of 20 of those The Harmony Branch™es. I need to put them everywhere in the house and about 5 in the car. But I don’t think they are going to help me with the loss of my camera.

*I am totally aware that not only is it improper to make ‘them’ a possessive but the entire sentence structure is rather odd and illegal. Sorry, Mrs. Beesley, but it flowed off the tongue and dripped onto the keyboard.

**I wear turtlenecks all the freakin’ time. Why am I choosing them as a point of contention in this case? I have no idea. Maybe I wish I could play the violin.

Flights and the Roast

I think I have allergies. Ever since I came home from my mini-vaca I’ve been sneezing and snotty. While in Utah – not so much. In fact, it was on the drive home from the Burbank airport that it started up. Every mile we drove closer to home, the snottier and sneezier I got. I’ve been thinking for months that I just keep getting sick every other week. Dude. What if it’s just allergies? What if it’s not my body but instead the flora and the fauna?

The flight home was awesome, by the way. In the security line directly in front of me there was a woman that wanted to discuss with anyone that would listen, and mostly those that didn’t want to, how she was still loaded from her party last night. Visibly weaving and slurring, and this is at 2pm in the afternoon, she wanted to touch your arm and talk into your face. She made the metal detector go off. Repeatedly. And then she would remove one item of jewelry and then try again. This went on for, oh, twenty tries, before the guy asked her to step to the side so he could do it manually. She started crying and shaking and starting to panic. I’ve never seen the security people have to remove someone before. They were so On It. Finally, all that 9/11 training going to good use. It was odd and slightly disturbing. But good in that 3rd grade recess monitor kind of way when the mean kid gets taken to the office. It’s drama. But you’re glad it happened.

And Southwest? Your plan of not assigning seats and making people sit in line at the gate for 2 hours before a flight on the floor, claiming your 4 foot square plot of carpet and setting up the Dutch oven and putting on the coffee, since if you want to sit in the waiting room in an actual seat, like, with back support, then hey, you suck and have to sit in the very back in the middle seat and hate your life while the person on your left sleeps on your shoulder and the person on your right has to get up and climb over you to use the lavatory 4 times? Sucks. I know, I know – your flight price when I bought the non-refundable ticket 2 months ago of $120 dollars round trip can’t be beat. But next time? I’m going to drive for 12 hours since that is less painful and has more legroom and less drunken people in the security line. News flash – you aren’t a rock concert ticket line. You are an airplane flight. Get over yourself.

Since money is super tight, I’m glad I bought the ticket so long ago (and it was non-refundable) or I wouldn’t have been able to go. And since I’m not really much of a shopper, and we spent most of the time at the house, the entire trip was pretty cost-effective, as trip-taking goes. However, I did buy a pair of shoes. On Sale. And I love them.

The best part of being home? Conversations with Joe.

“They put a tampon under this roast.”
“A what?”
“A tampon.”
“A tampon?”
“Well, I don’t know what else you would call it.
I blink. More blinking.
“Are you sure? That might be a health code issue. I don’t think we want to eat that roast.”
“I’m not unfamiliar with female anatomy. I know what it is.”
“Uh, you aren’t talking about female anatomy. You’re talking about something that goes into it.”
“Except I just call it ‘gear’.”
I had to go in the kitchen to see.
“I think that is probably best since what you are looking at looks like a sanitary napkin, not a tampon. But it isn’t one.”
“Well, I’ve never made love to ‘gear’ so I know less about it.”
“Either way, that’s gross that you said that.”
“Leah. A roast bleeds. You -”
“Enough!”

Interview with Jason Kottke

I’m a busy girl and there aren’t many sites that I click over to read more than once a day but Jason Kottke’s site is frequently updated with lots of link yummy-ness that I can’t stay away from. If you blog or get on the internet much, chances are, you know who Jason is. He’s well known for so many things that it might take more room/time than I have to list them. The short list: a year of micro-patron supported blogging, an interview with Newsweek’s Brian Braiker on msnbc.com, his live web-cam (which appears to have ended in Dec. 2005), a connoisseur of fonts including Silkscreen, which he created, B-Swing, a Senior Fellowship in the R&D Labs, the Kottke Diary at Valleywag.com which includes The Meg and Jason Courtship and Wedding Story, and the Matrix Revolutions post. A lot of people want to be him or be like him. I was very happy just to get to interview him.

Interview with Morphing Into Mama

You know that person that writes things that you read and it just gets you because it’s so true for you or someone close to you and so you want to get mad at them because they made you feel something – probably something you didn’t want to feel or think about – but you can’t really because whatever it is that they wrote was true? And then when you think about it for a while you realize that the stuff that person wrote wasn’t aimed at you anyway, but was just an expression of whatever is going on for them? And once you realize that, you think, ‘Wow, Morphing Into Mama is really quite awesome!’ and ‘I’d like to buy her a balloon and send her a greeting call from Elmo!’ and ‘Why can’t my butt look that cute in my capri-length chinos?’

New Tote

cottonside_1 jeanside_2 jeanside_1

I have looked for months for a heavy-duty bag that will fit both my laptop and my camera. All the laptop bags I could find were just big enough to fit the laptop, horizontally, and never the camera. And the camera bags? Forget it. Backpacks won’t work because I don’t want my camera to be in a large, open area and get knocked around and I also don’t want the shoulder straps of a backpack.

So, I made my own. Dimensions 14.5″ W by 17″ L. I put a couple of waist bands together to get create a shoulder strap that measures 50″ so it hits me at about the waist. I like it. The laptop will fit vertically with enough room inside to hold the cables/battery. And the pouch on one side fits my camera perfectly. I use diapers from Roadwired on both, which I love, love, love, so they will have some padding.

Good. Night!

Via Kottke: Bed Books. Oh, how many sad nights have I spent kinking up my neck because I just wanted to read ONE. MORE. CHAPTER. ‘Too Many!’ my out-of-alignment back screams. Now look what they have:

“The patent pending sideways text layout of Bed Books affords total comfort and eliminates the back and neck strain associated with the contorted body positions normally required for reading conventional books while lying down, and usually propped up, in bed.”

Sadly, the current selection for sale which includes Dracula, Pride and Prejudice and Tarzan is really not enough to keep me happy for long. But, I have every hope that more are on the way…..please?